Walnut Creek latest to share in the bike-share movement

Share this:

Rodney Ruiz, an office manager with LimeBikes, makes sure the bikes’ locks and software are working a few hours before the Jan. 23 kickoff event for this bike share program in the Shadelands Business Park in Walnut Creek. Some 500 of the bikes are set to be placed around the 267-acre business park.

WALNUT CREEK — First it was commercial pilot programs for delivery robots downtown, and next it will be a bicycle share program set to roll into the Shadelands Business Park, and later the downtown area.

The Shadelands bike share is the first fruits of a pilot program approved Jan. 16, by the City Council, to be operated by San Mateo-based startup LimeBike. The city also could welcome at least one more pilot program in the next few months operated by another company.

Though this isn’t the first time bike sharing has come to a business park — Santa Monica-based CycleHop operates the BRiteBikes share program at the Bishop Ranch business park in San Ramon — this is LimeBike’s first business-park venture.

It kicked off Tuesday with an event at the Ultimate Fieldhouse parking lot off Mitchell Avenue, where bikes were tested and the virtues of pedal power in and near the 267-acre business park extolled.

Walnut Creek Mayor Justin Wedel said the program is a boon to those who work in Shadelands.

“The bike-sharing program removes cars from our roads, which reduces greenhouse gases,” he said. “It provides additional means for people to get to other businesses, and it provides exercise for the community.”

The plan is for 500 of LimeBike’s hard-to-miss green-and-yellow bikes, complete with handle-bar basket, to be placed all around the park.

“Five hundred bikes isn’t a lot for the size of that business park,” said Megan Colford, LimeBike’s Bay Area general manager. “We’ll evaluate how many bikes we ultimately need — we might bring in more.”

While bike share programs are becoming more common within cities, that’s less the case within business parks.

Linda Rimac Colberg said Shadelands offers several good reasons for trying bike sharing there. With three shopping centers either within or bordering the business park, she said, the opportunities for bike use within the park are multiplying.

There also is that “last mile” idea, in which bikes could be the last link for Shadelands workers or visitors (to Kaiser Permanente’s Park Shadelands medical complex, for instance) to take the County Connection bus to a stop within the park, and bike the rest of the way.

“Shadelands is growing, with more people working and shopping here, including at the Orchards (shopping center), and you will see more and more people moving about,” said Colberg, a spokeswoman for the business park. “Eventually, there will be more sidewalks, more bike lanes, more covered bus stops.”

All those factors, bike share proponents say, also work toward promoting better overall physical fitness and cutting greenhouse-gas emissions from cars that will, in theory, remain parked for more local employee trips than before.

Helping make this share program economically feasible is that LimeBike’s shared two-wheelers aren’t anchored to stations or docks, making this system cheaper than those requiring building fixed stations — paid for either by LimeBike or by the host city — to which the bikes would be anchored.

Instead of unlocking bikes from such a station, customers use a map as part of the LimeBike smartphone app to find the nearest available GPS-equipped bike. The paying rider then unlocks the bike by scanning a QR code or typing in the bike’s plate number.

When the ride is over, customers simply park the bike and lock the rear wheel. Users pay $1 to use the bikes for up to 30 minutes, or can get a monthly $30 subscription, Colford said.

In the Bay Area, LimeBike operates in Alameda and South San Francisco, and is launching other new programs in El Cerrito, Albany and Burlingame. LimeBike reps have also been talking with officials in Lafayette, Orinda and Moraga to discuss possible pilot programs there.

Sam Richards has been a newspaper reporter/editor since 1982, when he got his first job as a weekend police reporter in Missoula, Mont. He later worked in Belgrade, Mont. and Tracy, Calif. before joining in 1992 what became the Bay Area News Group. He works out of Walnut Creek, covering a variety of stories, with a focus on City Hall news.

With lower home prices, more Californians could afford a home purchase in the fourth quarter of 2018 compared to the previous quarter, but the California Association of Realtors reports higher interest rates lowered affordability from the previous year for most counties.